PubCon Day 3

Hi Guys, Day 3 was my best day for some reason. I meet some guys during classes and break outs and they gave me some great ideas. Also, I meet a guys who runs hotel website and when I meet him 5 years ago, he was fairly small. When I meet him at the show, he was surrounded by 10 guys. He now has 55 employees and grossed about 40 million, pretty impressive. His site is http://www.airporthotelguide.com/

Here are the notes from Day 3.

Link Juice

• You need to find high quality links - Remember now is quality not quantity
• Prospecting to find links
• Find related industry
• Try to find links that no one has
• Great suggestion was to put your main key word in google. Then click search, then if you click on left side, more related search. You will get a list of related words. Remember you can look on page 1, 2, 3 for other sites to build relationships with.
• Also on google
• KW+Blogs
• KW+Directory
• KW+Twitter
• KW+news
• KW+retailer
• KW+schools
• You want to find Quality Sites - Related
• You want to find sites that your competition does not link to.
• Try not to use Forums and Directories for back links. 
• Quality Check the site you want to link to:
• Page Rank or MozScore
• Make this a science - Make spread sheet of the sites you are contacting
• Prep for Email campaign
• Do you best to find email to contact
• Budget to get the business - pay them, gift cards, barter
• Make email templates
• 1st email 
• Marketing director, webmaster
• Check contact page, whois, form
• Follow up email
• Goal to talk on phone
• make a relationship / rapport
• Follow up
• Negotiation for link placement
• Remember your site is a resource
• If you have the budget, you can pay$$ for advertising on a site.
• If you offer to buy ad placement, you have chance also to meet them and build rapport with site owners. A chance to post your content.
• Be direct, email them that you want to have the link from their site.
• Link Buying is a No/No 
• Goal is Natural link approach
• Scale
• Natural
• Wisely
•  How to use, Reviews, Posts

Competitive Intel

• What kind of links are coming to your site, to your content, your blog?
• Brute Force is dead - Don't buy links
• Quality of Links - Less is more, Building relationship
• Cloudlet tool - Not sure what this does
• Give people a reason to share your material to others - You need to have good content!!
• Build out your content with Wordpress
• Try your best to build your content to go out virally - Youtube
• Make sure you content deals with the Seasons, Spring, Summer, Christmas
• Content has long life
• Info graphic is big (read more)
• Blogs, social promotion
• Case Studies
• Blogs that can write for you.
• Sposored Reviews
• Pay per Post
• Blog Vertise

Link Attraction vs Link Building

• Creating Interesting Content attracts links
• Blogs
• Ebooks
• Podcast
• Webcast
• White paper
• Enews
• case studies
• infographic
• contest
• Keep Hitting Singles and you will get noticed
• Videos
• interviews
• free ebooks attracts
• infographics
• contest
• Solid Blog Post Attracts Links
• Use Google tools to find content ideas
• Yahoo Answers is a good place to find content ideas
• Build out list for content
• Build your content on Longtail Key Words
• Your titles are critical
• You must promote your content
• A top blog to look at Cup and Cashmere
• Also, Beef Jerky Reviews
• Does your blog show up in Mobile?

Creating Direct Ad Campaigns for you Site

• Approach for Direct Ads
• Your Readers could be possible advertisers
• Cut  out google ad Sense and do it on your own
• Set Up Media Kit
• Need help Go to ProBlogger
• Cold Call is your best bet with prospecting
• More information on a Media Kit
• Info 1
• Info 2
• Tools
• Open X
• Disclosure Policy

Site Review of DolphinWorld

• Take Out Google Ad Sense ads the 250X250 - hurting my SEO
• Simplify my footer links, one line, only the basics, About me, Privacy, Terms and Conditions, contact us
• Make the Site more relevent
• Ad some customer Quotes and Responses
• More photos
• my Secured Certificate is not working properly
• My tabs did not work one of the browsers
• All the panelist said I need to switch the site over to wordpress
• One panalest said to use Thesis Themes Layover
• Another panelist told me to get coder to make a hand coded template. She said it is safer and better because of Hacker are really attacting wordpress site. It is easy for hackers to get in.
• She recommended a guy, named Thomas Vasquez, psd2wordpress.com
• One panelist said to make sure to get a wordpress host to keep from being hacked and they update word press automatically. She recommended page.ly
• Check out Zappos Footer
• Build more trust

How to build compelling Contest for your website

• Use Wild Fire to set up contest campaign
• Easy to Use
• Monitize
• She recommended sweepstakes because it was easier. Give away $250 plus product. Not an IPAD, everyone is giving away Ipad.
• Make sure you know the costs/benefits
• Contest will help you know your customers
• Make sure you are clear on the rules to enter
• You can not make them facebook like you
• You can say though, they need to facebook like you to win!
• Help with Designs for your banners, 99designs
• Use your existing customers to help evangelize your business - These contest will help.
• Existing customers might get a bonus entry
• Tool -- Shortstack to help build custom facebook pages to maximize the contest
• Custom emails for the contest
• You should have contest 1 X a month.
• The bigger the offer the more buzz!! $500 up works.

Well that is it. I hope this helps you guys!!
God Bless,
John

Pubcon Day 2

Today was a little harder to pick up information because I was really tired but hopefully this will make sense.

Matt Cutts from Google
SEO = Marketing
SEO - Coaching SEO  is becoming more about human Nature.

• Only Consistence is  Change
• Change is going to Benefit you
• SEO 2010 big issue was hacked sites getting rid of them
• SEO 2011 Getting rid of Low Quality Sites (panda update)
• Communication with Google now is easier through webmaster tools. You can now ask google why you were booted.
• Long Term Google 
• Mobile = Computer
• Social / Twitter Facebook and Open Web
• Local Search
• Closer View - Better Page understanding
• Google Bot will crawl facebook
• Google looks for the content above the fold
• If you have an ad above the fold this could be a problem
• Search will become more personal
• Google + Biz
• Toyota Business Page with Google + Check it out
• Communication and transparency for your software
• Things to do
• Webmaster tools
• In webmaster tools sign up for email alerts
• Fat Ping when you publish something new
• Subscribe to 
• Webmaster Blog
• Inside Search Blog
• Webmaster Video Channel
• Q&A from Audience
• Trust is big thing for Google
• Now the search results is in SSL format. So when you go to google.com, it is https not http anymore. They did this for security reason but there was grumbling that some key word data is lost now.
• Search is more personal
• Download data from webmaster tools and use it.
• Press releases and duplicate content - They know about it.
• Is the author high quality - they look for that
• Backlinks are quality not quantity
• with the Panda update, they look at links and see which links are good and which are bad
• Look at your top landing pages and see how they do on webmaster tools
• Top queries - look at this
• You will know you have a high quality site if you are willing to send your child to it.

Personal - Meet this guy VegasVIP.com -- Personal to look at site

Conversion Class 

• Plan where to Start
• Implement Operation - Using a framework for the change
•  Improve interaction - what to change?
• Follow a methodology
• Trust
• Visitor
• Incentives
• Fears and uncertainties
• Buying
• Do this for Homepage, all listing, detail pages, and send away
• Urgency to act
• Do your best to take the pain away from the guest.
• Overture -- Tool
• Instead of checking Title, buttons, and Graphics, you need to change the lay out around to see what gets the best results.

Hip Monk check out site for Travel

Mobile Search

• 95% of mobile search is done on google search
• People want Immediacy and Location
• 53% on Mobile purchase
• Touch to call from the screen
• Ask what device - PC / Mobile
• Feature phones
• Smart phones
• Make sure site is touch friendly
• Tablets
• These results are similar to PC
•  Firefox has a tool to see website on different phones/devices - Add on
• Mobi Ready another tester
• m.dot goes to feature phones
• smart phones and tablets get same URL

Mobile Apps vs Web

• The money is the question
• Built in HTML5
• Some apps to look at mint.com, find a place to stay
• Design is law , Bad user experience and loose customer. No 2nd chance.
• The consumer
• the mobile phone is to help drive conversion
• 70% of mobile use is for research
• A sale on mobile is usually within 1 hour.
• The big sector on mobile.
• Travel
• Coupons
• Mobile apps
• Keep these simple
• Deliver to the consumer
• Mobile website
• Streamline user experience
• Optimize for all devices
• test on all devices
• Mobile Marketing
• SMS/Texting
• Email
• QR Codes
• Coupons
• Mobile Apps
• Google started Android just to be able to get data from mobile users.

Best of the Web

• Site Redesign
• Slide Share is where a lot of slides from the show will be
• Preparation
• Communication
• Goals
• Prioritze
• 1st, 2nd, 3rd
• Analysis
• Site performance
• URL Structure
• Navigation
• Design for User and for Google Bot
• Schema-Creator -- Tool
•  
• Info Gathering
• Conversion by Key Word
• Conversion by Country/Launguage
• Top Converting Landing Pages
• Low converting landing pages
• Engagement Blogs / Posts
• Underperforming content - Exiting, bounce rates
• Revenue Generator - Key Words and Content
• Goal Abandonment
• Slow Page loads
• Design
• Keep a before and after for testing
• Testing
• So you can test new design
• To test your site - Usertesting.com a great tool!!
•  conceptfeedback.com
• Silverbackapp.com
• Loop11
• Speed of your site GTmetrix
• Participation
• Benchmarking
• Google analytics annotation tool
• raven tools event manager
• detailed spreedsheet with roles
• Launch
• Engagement metrics
• Tracking
• Check for broken Links - 
• Tool Screamfrog.com

Process for Online Search and Social

• People find out
• Desires
• Needs
• Tasks
• Process and framework
• Seobook
• Audience Demographic
• Go to Fan Page
• Yahoo Clues
• Google insights
• Page by Page mapping
• Depth of Navigation
• Categories and internal linking
• Themed verticals
• Silos - Keep like things together
• URL directory structure - Page titles and keepwords
•  Understand your audience behavior
• Group brainstorm
• Ease the users pain
• Content Creation
• Make a plan

Making things Social

• Twitter Loves Questions - Why? What? When?
• Start asking questions
• /Blog Post Title Length - shorter titles get more tweets
• Link dex
• Blog links to interesting events
• Email is still great way for social
• Inspire Trust
• content
• media
• awards and certificates
• association
• Authors creditability
• Authors Bios
• Authors accomplishments
• Authoritative site
• Where your peers to go to
• Where content is king
• Syndication and guest posting

Getting More Links
Not sure where this came up but really cool tool for content -- Textbroker.com

• To get links here are some unique ideas
• Buy Websites and you can place your links on these web sites
• Go to Flippa.com to buy sites
• If you can, buy your competition sites
• Do a key word search on your topic and look on page 2 and 3 make an offer to buy the site.
• When buying a site and if the alexa score is not 300,000 or less, then don't buy.
• page rank does not mean much
• Forum for links
• Site buy price. Look at how many back links the site has and offer $10 per back link.

Some person items

• Look at my link directory and prune it
• Get ride of bad links
• Get ride of links that are not recipricating
• Get ride of bad pages

Wow, Finish this day. Will do notes on day 3. I found day 3 was better than 2.
God Bless,
John

Pubcon Day 1

Hey Guys,
I am Las Vegas at the Pubcon Show and I arrived late for the first class today. I flew in from MIA at 7am and arrived here in Vegas at 9:30am.

I did tons of writing but a lot of the notes won't make sense but do your best to pick out the best information.

Social Media Signals - arrive late for this one.

• Make sure you get the Plus 1 button on your site. Have your employees and friends click it. It will help your rankings.
• The Fundamentals are still strong for SEO - Link Building and Content Development for now. 
• Target groups in Facebook and work the groups.
• For twitter -- Low followers = Less influence for the search engines
• For Twitter - Stay away for 1:1 ratio = Following : followers
• Low quality Like from facebook are "No Good"
• Google Plus now has business profiles - Sign up fast!! Business names will go fast.

Advanced SEO

• If you can, sign up for Google Places and Bing Local
• Don't use the same Anchor Text for Key Words, mix it up.
• Google is moving from Page Quality to Site Quality. So if you have pages that are not ranking or old pages, you need to put "no follow tags" on them. Those old pages can kill you !!
• Size and Site as a whole now!
• Total pages indexed
• Total organic landing pages
• Ratio of Total Pages Indexed to Total Deep Links
• Look at Duplicate Content - Change or get rid of these pages
• Use your Google webmaster Tools to help you with this 
• It is better to use "No Index" than "No Follow"
• Human Engagement is big now - Facebook , Twitter, your site
• Google bought Post Rank for a reason
• Build Consistent engagement signals with in your content
• Develop links from pages/domains with consistent engagement signals.
• Backlink diversity anchor text strategy. Focus on a natural footprint.
• Synonym and rotate different phrases.
• Backlinks with partial matches, company name, generic phases.
• Try Google Search bar and type in the words phase you want and see what the drop down shows from google and use those words for the back links.
•  

Hot Topic and Trends

• Get your Links in PDF. Google really like PDF for your ranking. Have the PDF on your site somewhere.
• Tools to use
• Link Research Tools
• SeoMoz
• Search Metric
• Make sure you take your low ranking or pages  that you don't want index and use the no follow tag within the site. Check out how to install
• Make sure to put your links in your Youtube Description and any Wiki Post. This will help.
• You Tube - Are you tracking your youtube search Ranking?
• Tool - Voot.net

Tim Ash Conversion Clinic

• Continuity with your site
• Make sure to put the Google Plus 1 and Face like Button on all confirmation pages
• Try your best to Engage the viewer!
• Simplify your site
• Verify difficult operations on your site and fix.
• The best kind of commitment from reader
• Voluntary - Can not be cooerced
• very Public
• Small Steps and get bigger commitment later
•  Tool to know your customer and get them engaged BT Buckets --FREE
• Make Sharing easy on your site, always look how to make it easier
• . Facebook likes
• Tweets
• How can a guest write a review
• Rating a product or service
• Clicking through  to another page
•  For me, Amtrak
• Go wide and measure everything
• # of Facebook Fans
• Total # of social engagements
• # of Likes
• Humanized the experience
• Huge growth in realistic and interactive websites
• Video
• Site to look at Net Nanny
• Demonstrate social proof - We have over 10,000 fans
• Pandora
• It always too go have many because it tells there are a lot of people just like me.
• Find a way to recycle your content
• One column of your website has to be your trust column, how long in business, BBB
• should be on the right side of your page
• Tool to where people would go on on your site, Attention Wizard

Well this is Day 1, lot of information.
God Bless,
John

• SiteTuner for to help with Conversion

Change Title Tag and Beware the Google Change

I had changed my title tag in my main website, www.dolphinworld.org, and did not think I would suffer that much with Google. Boy was I wrong, I was #1 and #2 for my major key words and now I am #8 - #12 and the phones and emails have stopped.

dolphin swim
swim with dolphin
swim with the dolphin

Darn, it hurts but I know it will go up again, I have the faith. So the lesson is, be careful if you change your title tags and know your ranking may be affected.
God Bless,
John